The Absence Of You
by TheMotherDragon
Summary: The goodbye scene in episode 5x22 from Elena's perspective. There is a very explicit tear warning. If you are still fragile from watching it yourself, proceed with caution. Rated M because I can't keep myself from cursing when I write.


I have spent the better part of thirty six hours crying over 5x22.

It was everything I ever wanted from Damon's death and more, but the pain has rendered me essentially useless. I thought maybe writing about Damon's goodbye from Elena's perspective would help me grieve enough so I can return to my tumblr posts and my other story "For The Universe Abhors Our Love." We'll see if it works.

Bear in mind I'm in pain. This one shot is a reflection of it.

**The Absence Of You**

_Damon is gone_.

I keep saying the words over and over again in my head.

They're playing on a loop, circling around my brain, and wrapping my heart in a vice so tight I'm expecting it to simply disintegrate into dust at any moment.

_Damon is gone. _

If I hadn't died with him in that car I'd never be so certain it was true.

But we passed onto the Other Side the same way we died in the explosion — together.

So I know he's gone. I feel it. The absence of him is more tangible to me than anyone else's presence ever could be.

_Damon is gone. _

How ironic that I'm standing in this crypt with the ghost of the man I love, able to feel his touch but unable to see or hear him when I need to the most. It feels like a joke the universe is playing on me.

_Oh you know. Looking at the stars, listening to the universe laugh at me._

He said those words to me weeks ago. He was so sure the universe was working to tear us apart with those forced visions of Stefan and me. He took it as confirmation that we were never going to work.

I knew better even then. I knew we could work. I knew we would work it out somehow, someday, someway just like we always do.

I still believe that. Given the time we would've come back together in a typically marvelous fashion with passion and love and pain so magnificent it burns us both as it consumes us with its power. That power is what makes us after all. We'd never have stayed apart forever if we had it our way.

But we don't have it our way. Because apparently he was right.

The universe is determined to see us fail. To keep us from each other at all costs.

And since our most recent breakup didn't seem to do the trick, since we are incapable of staying away from each other for any length of time, the universe took matters into its own hands.

The universe took him from me for real.

Not with hurtful words about how we can't be friends or with harsh truths about how we're in a toxic relationship. Not with any sort of temporary distance that I'm prepared to live with.

No. This time the universe decided to play its cruelest joke of all.

_Damon is gone. _

For gods sake we both died this time. We chose it of our own free will for the express purpose of staying together in life or death. It didn't matter which.

Except I'm alive again. So is almost everyone else supernatural that I've loved and lost in recent years. We're all here just as we were before.

And he isn't. He's not here. He's on the Other Side. Without me.

He's standing in this fucking crypt with me and I can't see him, can't hear him, can barely feel him when he touches me.

Touches that I know are his way of saying goodbye.

_Damon is gone. _

I've watched more people die than I can count. Most of them are people I love. People I was convinced I couldn't live without.

It turns out I'm stronger than that. As much as I loved my parents, my aunt, Alaric, Bonnie, Jeremy and everyone else I've ever lost, eventually I moved on. Sometimes because I had too. Sometimes because I was lucky enough to have them back.

The grief was different every time with every person. I've never felt the same loss twice. Yet I always knew it for what it was: sadness, anguish, hopelessness even. I've known every shade of sorrow that exists in this world.

But this. This is something else. This is nothing like I've ever experienced.

This isn't grief. This isn't pain. This isn't despair.

This is fucking torture. The worst agony and desperation I've felt in nearly two decades of living.

_Damon is gone. _

This can't be happening. He can't really be gone.

Doesn't he understand that I need him?

Doesn't the universe understand that there's nothing for me here without him?

_Damon is gone. _

I haven't cried this hard since Jeremy died. A loss I was sure I would never recover from.

When I lost my brother my chest burned with the sorrow.

This is a thousand times worse. It isn't just my lungs and heart this time.

It's everything. Everything hurts.

This can't be happening.

_Damon is gone. _

When I feel his hand draw away from my hair I know his time here is short. I'm sure there are things he's saying that I can't hear. Things I want to hear more than anything. I'm sure his eyes are blazing with that all consuming love he has for me. That his voice is soft like it always is when its just the two of us.

I want to hear him. I want to see him.

A devastated plea leaves me before I can stop.

"Please don't leave me."

It's my only wish. I'd give up anything, pay any price, make any sacrifice if he'd just stay here.

Is that too much to ask? For the man I love to stay with me? Is it too much to want to kiss him, hold him, look in those beautiful blue eyes that hold a soul filled to the brim with so much devotion to me it makes my head spin?

What the fuck did I do to deserve this.

Haven't I lost enough. Haven't we lost enough.

_Damon is gone. _

We've spent all this time trying to work through what makes us toxic so we could be together without destroying everything around us. We've finally come to a place where we can put aside the darkness and just be, everything else be damned.

And now he's leaving me.

I know it isn't his fault. I know he'd do anything to come back to me if he could.

But he's beyond my reach now. This is something even he can't fix.

_Damon is gone._

The hundredth time it passes through my mind I slide to the floor, my legs shaking violently from the force of my desolation.

I feel him touch my cheek again and I know he's crouched in front of me looking at me like I'm his entire world, like I'm everything that matters to him.

_You are my life._

A sob tears through my throat when I remember those words. I know he means it. I feel it.

I should've told him when I had the chance that he is my life too.

_Damon is gone._

I feel the barest whisper of his fingers sliding down my left arm and he draws it out and holds my hand. And I know this is it. He's going, slipping away from me. Forever.

His thumb strokes the back of my hand softly. It feels like he's saying I love you.

It also feels like he's saying goodbye.

Even though my tears are constricting my throat and clogging up my lungs, I plead with him and the universe one last time.

"Please. Please come back to me."

That's when his touch disappears. And my hand is left dangling.

_Damon is gone. _

I can't breathe. I can't think.

I can't feel my heart anymore. I think he took it with him.

_Damon is gone. _

Somehow I find myself standing, leaning against the wall, staring at nothing.

The tears don't stop. They continue to assault me with the truth of what I've just lost.

Everything. I just lost everything.

_Damon is gone. _

My mind seems to only be capable of thinking these horrifying words on repeat, as if the more I think them the more quickly I will accept that he isn't here with me anymore. And he never will be again.

My mind doesn't seem to grasp that I already know he's gone. I feel it.

I feel empty. I feel drained. I feel like half of me is missing.

I feel my soul splintered in two, like he dragged a portion of it with him to the world beyond the Other Side.

I know I'll never get it back. Just like I'll never get him back. They are forever lost to me.

_Damon is gone. _

I feel an arm reach out to me and I nearly jump out of my skin, thinking for one wild, impossible second that it's him, that he somehow managed to defy the very fabric of nature and find his back to me.

It isn't him though. It's Alaric.

Alaric is alive again. I should be happy. Relieved.

I feel nothing. Nothing but a nightmarish misery that eclipses any pain ever experienced by anyone else in this world.

I see the truth of it in Alaric's eyes. He feels it too. The loss, the pain.

But not as much as I do. No one could be as viciously aware of _his _absence as I am.

I know that Alaric knows. Yet I feel the need to finally voice what has been running through my head since I came into this accursed crypt and saw the candles blown out, since Bonnie told me it was too late to bring him back to me.

"He's gone."

I can't even talk clearly through my tears. So I fall into Ric's arms, seeking any comfort I can find. Knowing as I do that I won't find any because every wounded part of me craves a different source of solace. A different set of arms.

Ric doesn't say anything. He just holds me. Lets me fall apart because he knows there's nothing that can help me in this moment.

I'm sure he thinks at some point I will calm down enough to talk. That I will find my voice and the tears will dry up and we can have a proper reunion.

I wish that were true. I wish that somewhere down the road I could find it in me to be happy that Ric is back. To be happy about anything at all.

The problem is that nothing will ever be okay again. Because Damon is dead.

And I wish I was too.


End file.
